Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Grandfathers

I miss mine,he was cheap as hell,and a bit ornery,but he also taught me to shoot straight(literaly and figuratively)

taught me how to tie a line,that if you don't work you don't eat.

he grew up as an orphan in the depresion,working in silk mills for a penny a day,rose to the top of his proffesion,including patenting an improvement to the Jaquard loom.his mother died in the 1918 flu pandemic,and his father was crazy and violent,actually beat the crap out of him.

the only good gun he ever owned is hanging over my fireplace(99 300 sav).
hunted his whole life and never took a deer or bear,but could shoot doubles on quail with his JC Higgins bolt shotgun.

I swear he could feel fish in a lake or river while driving by,we'd just pull over and bang em.

he always had a pair of scissors with him,he was so cheap that when I was little and he would take me for blue gills that if the fish swallowed the hook,he would cut the fish in half to get the hook and worm back.

he was a bare knuckle boxer to make money in his youth "the Paterson Bull" and legend has it he unintentionaly killed a guy in a fight.

he had arms like oak trees and when he was 80 and I was 17 and all buff he could still beat me arm wrestling.

the 2 things I regret the most are not seeing him before he died,and that he will never meet my son and daughter.(she is a carbon copy of my Grandmother)

meanwhile I can't even get my father to come to one of my sons football games(2x defensive MVP)or even watch my kids for an afternoon.

everybody needs a grandpa,tell me about your's

My father's father passed away eleven years before I was born. Mom's dad had sort of up and left the family long before I was born. We have old movies of a visit to him in Missouri when I was too young to remember. When I was about eleven years old, Mom received a phone call saying that he had passed away in Texas. Never having known either of my grandfathers, I am trying hard to provide my grandson with a grandfather to know.

good on ya 5sdad

I know more 'of' my grandfather. He died when I was 6, but I still view him through the eyes of a 6 year old, that as a hero.

My Grandfather on my Dad side died when i was 13 and i remember him and wish i could have been with him longer . My Grandfather on my Mother side i never knew.

Im a lucky one. My mom was young when she got knocked up but it meant I am able to know my grampa and grama. I didnt start hunting until later in life but when I started I asked him to start again also. I hunt with him every year still and will always cherish the time, even if he is ornery.

mine was a quiet but very strong man. in many ways. he taught us all the value of humility but also showed us that when you are wronged you stand up strong and fix it.

he also taught me how people always should be most important, and that the things we have in common are way more important than things we differ on (color, religion, etc).

he always had those Marine forearms, even when he was 70...like he could rip your arm off at the shoulder while shaking hands if he wanted to.

my other grandfather is still with us and is more like me in a lot of ways. he is very tolerant and understanding and really knows how to put family first in everything. he is funny and kind and works his butt off all the time, every day, on anything he touches.

if i can be like my grandfathers i will be very happy with how i turned out.

My Mom's dad could tell me about WWI while he never made it out of the states he was still proud of his time in the Army. In his working life he owned a lumberyard and later worked for a heavy equipment company. Was a hunter in his younger days but had given it up by the time I came along.

Dad's dad was an older man when I knew him and I have no continuous memories of him. He died when I was seven. He came up hard and rough in reconstruction Texas and wore a pistol all the time except to church. I remember a couple of times when he felt good and his arthritus wasn't bothering him too much he would saddle his horse. I would ride behind him holding his belt. We would lope by the graden fence and he would shoot tin cans off fence posts at about ten yards. At hog killing time he would stand in the middle of the pen and yell, "Start them running," he wouldn't shoot a standing hog but head shot running ones.
He taught me to shoot a pistol when I was six but I never was and never will be as good a shot as he was.

BCR

My Grandfather on my Dad�s side passed away when I was 12. I do remember fishing with him in fresh and salt and a heck of a fisherman he was. The day he passed away he caught an 8 lb largemouth in the golf course water hazard across the street from their house, told my Grandmother he was going to take a nap before cutting the grass, and passed away in his sleep on the sofa. His priorities match mine!

My Grandfather on Mom�s side was my hero. Trained as a ball turret gunner on B-17�s but after aerial gunnery school in Kingman AZ pulled and sent to flight school he spent the rest of the war in flight school and as an instructor then a series of civilian flying jobs and in 52 went to Eastern Airlines and flew with them for the next 30 years. An avid fisherman and hunter he traveled North and South America, but strangely never went to Africa, fishing and hunting, often with my Grandmother who wasn�t a hunter but loved fishing.

He was a tough guy and you would never hear a word of thanks or congrats on a job you did or a nice fish or deer at the time but a year or so later I�d hear something from my Mom or an Uncle that he thought you had done well in either performance or with the game taken and that certainly meant something. I miss him and when he was sick at the end of his life in Nov of 01 I said I was going to skip deer season on the farm in Kentucky and go see him in Florida and he got his voice up through the emphysema and told me if I came he wouldn�t talk to me and that I damn well better go hunt the mountain while I can.

I have a few guns and fly rods of his and I think about him every time I pick one up.

My mom's father- Julian (Judy) Brown like your grandpa, ADK4RICK never shot a deer, bear or anything bigger than a goose but he often shot triples on quail. A WWII vet and paratropper in the Pacific Campaign. He introduced me to fishing and hunting. He was a well respected and mild guy that loved the VFW and the Phillies. We spent many summer nights listening to the Phils in his woodshop acting like we were doing something constructive.

He died in 1997 when I was 30 years old. He had a heart attack while my Grandmother was taking care of her Mother on the other side of town. My 6 year old is named after him. He likes to hear about his Great Grandfather.

If this thread continues I'll write about my Dad's father. Another great American.

I never knew my maternal grandfather, but from the stories I have heard from my mother, I'm a mellowed version. He often said what was on his mind, and wasn't particularly concerned if it would be taken as rude (that's where we differ). He was particular about his hunting and fishing gear, some of which I still have but don't use much... don't want to wreck an heirloom, and the new stuff is so much better. He was a top notch Civil Engineer and Surveyor... when I asked about him at the Clackamas County Surveyors Office, if they had any plats of his, the guy just said "oh, yeah". I often wonder how I would have turned out if he would not have had a heart attack when I was a year old... I'm sure he would not have allowed me to flounder around as long as I did.

My paternal grandfather was an immigrant filbert (hazelnut) farmer who lived through the Great Depression, worked at a cement pipe plant, fished, and did other odd jobs when the orchard allowed him time away. Frugal does not even begin to describe him. I remember being fascinated by his Swedish accent, but he was mostly a quiet, unassuming man who took his work and church seriously. I regret not spending more time with him, not asking him more about his childhood in Europe, or his time commercially fishing in Alaska and at the mouth of the Columbia River. His exact boat is in a museum in Astoria, Oregon. He and my dad were going through, and asked the caretaker if grandpa could climb in, where he found where he had carved his name. Most of our time together was spent working in the orchard. His attic was a wonderment of new stuff for a little kid... books on the First World War, books on Alaska, years' worth of old Alaska magazines, books on farming, books on Europe.

Both my Granddads were farmers Paternal GD died while he was still on the farm when I was around 8. All I remember of him was that he was usually working and the hard work was done with his pair of horses.

My other Granddad left the farm before WWII and had a bar/restaurant/gas and auto repair business until the war was nearly over. He sold that business and became a night watchman at a gasket factory outside Detroit.

He was the sportsman in the family. We hunted and fished together whenever we could and he was the one who encouraged me to begin shooting while I was fairly young. I didn't know much about age requirements or hunting licenses and seasons back then but that didn't slow me down. If I had enough $$ to buy a box of .22's, S, L or LR, I was in hog heaven. There was a good sized family dump in the rocks behind their house, where, with today's prices, I probably destroyed a small fortune in antique glass, Prince Albert cans and other such memorabilia.

He died when I was around 12 and from then on I was on my own. I missed him a ton while growing up and took over his job, shepherding my younger brothers on up into their teens.

He was a man I really admired.

He was born in Texas in 1900 and was an ornery bastard. He was a timber faller and saw filer and worked his ass off til my grandmothers cooking killed him. He was 80 when he died.
He had a couple hundred acres and since I didn't have a dad I was with him most of the time. I was his first grandchild. He got me a .22 when I was probably seven and turned me loose. It is a miracle that I didn't kill myself. I did kill pretty much anything that moved and I regret some of that now.
He had a bunch of hounds and we chased them all over hell. I remember it was hard for me to keep up and he and his friends thought that was real funny. I killed my first deer when I was nine and still have the picture of it in the back of his 55 Chevy pickup. One time we killed a Bear and he tied it on the hood of his pickup and the bears head was down on the fender facing forward. We were stopped at the main intersection in town and an old woman was crossing the street. The woman was not paying any attention to us and looked up when she got right in front of that Bear. She jumped straight up and I can still hear my grandfather laughing. He must have told that story a thousand times before he died. I could go on forever.
He was a good guy and I miss him, maybe someone will say the same about me someday. I guess that's about all a guy can ask for. Ken

First Indian to graduate from the first ever school for Indians.

Kinda tough to live up to his accomplishments.

http://www.uncp.edu/map/df_lowry_bldg.htm

Both of my Grandpas died within 6 months of each other when I was only 11. I only wish I'd had a chance to know them.

What I do know is that in reading this thread, I am reading about some men who were idolized by their grandkids in a lot of cases. I can only hope to do as well with my own kids who are only 3 years old now. I'll be 55 when they graduate high school if all goes well. When I get my chance to be grandpa, I hope to leave as important a legacy as what the previous posters have indicated their grandpas did

I really like my Grandpa on my dad's side. He's a Vietnam Vet and always has cool stories to tell and he don't sugar coat things either which does kind of tick off some of the PC folks in my family. My Great-Grandpa on my dad's side is still alive, but a little senile at times, but I think he's doing that just to mess with us. Great-Grandpa on my mom's side is a little on the annoying side because he calls almost on a daily basis to talk about absolutely NOTHING. And it's not just me he does that to, he does that to EVERYONE in the family. My girlfriend thinks it;s funny to watch me talk to him until I pass the phone to her.

But yeah, I love the old guys. At times I wish I was raised by them instead of my parents.

TTT

My maternal grandfather passed away when i was 6 but i have a pic of when i was 3. My grandmother had gone to town or wherever so papa Tom cleaned out the fireplace real good and sat me in there to scare grandma when she came back. He got the biggest kick out of simple silly stuff like this. He wasnt much of a hunter, was a peanut farmer by trade and a dairy farmer out of necessity. At the end of the day after I had wasted more .22 shells than should be allowed we would sit out by the barn and he would knaw on a Days Work plug and I would ride the tractor around and around just wasting fuel for no reason other than i liked it and if I liked it......He liked it. I miss the old man, this is one of the best threads I recall in my short time here at the fire. Good day




Rick- the scissor comment got me rolling for a minute, that is pure greatness.

Boggy- I love the hog story, i think some of the best parts about grandpas is the little quirks they have and stick tight to.